The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

William Shakespeare is without a doubt the greatest Poet of the English speaking world and to this very day constant translations of his timeless works bear witness to the appreciation of his supreme genius by man in all four corners of the Globe. His incomparable wit, as, to mention just a few, demonstrated in every one of his plays be it Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard II, Richard III, Henry VIII, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet or The Taming of the Shrew has, throughout the ages, fired the imagination of mankind and his authority among men of great achievement, scholars and students, playgoers or those who simply enjoy the reading of his writings time and again has grown as time and life progresses. Born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564 he lived only fifty-two years during which time he, apart from some miscellaneous Poems, wrote no less than thirty-seven plays. Having attended a grammar or free school, founded in the reign of Henry VI at Stratford, he courted and married the eight years older Anne Hathaway at the age of eighteen in December 1582 and soon moved to London where the taste for plays and players was so great that already—probably eight; six for adults and two for children—different companies were in residence there. The power of issuing, in favour of certain of the court nobility, licences which entitled the granter to incorporate a company of players, lay with the Lord Chamberlain and it was only by becoming a member of a regularly licensed company that a player could escape being considered, in the phraseology of the statute law, a “vagabond”. The company which Shakespeare first joined is believed to have been that of Lord Strange which was however afterwards absorbed into what was both then and later to be a most distinguished one. It was first called Lord Hunsdon's, then—after his appointment to the office—the Lord Chamberlain's and in 1603 The King's. In 1599 after the Globe Theatre built by James Burbage, manager and head of the Lord Chamberlain's company, was ready, the company removed there. In 1613 they began acting at the Blackfriars, between St. Paul's and Blackfriars Bridge, which Burbage had converted into a Theatre in 1596. The Blackfriars was a Winter Theatre, and was therefore roofed in, differing in that respect from the Globe, which was principally a Summer Theatre, where Shakespeare likewise continued to act. These were the years and the scenes of his greatest triumphs. He died on the 23rd of April 1616 and his name has ever since filled the world. The realms of fancy would appear uninhabited if Shakespeare's creations were withdrawn from them. Men are prouder of the earth on which they live, and of themselves, because he was one of their fellow-men.